Dan Rather

Moi ICI:

...remember back when CBS broke the story, that Bush had received favorable treatment in the Guard, remember when Dan Rather reported that and OH GEEZ! ... turns out he didn’t report the story correctly. Fuck. Oh no, bad information.

BAM! The Republicans jumped all over it, and before you know it Dan Rather was issuing an apology AND setting a retirement date. “hey, I fucked up...”

What? Hey, maybe you did fuck up, but this will be interesting...lemme see a hand of Democrats that, after the Dan Rather nonsense, stood up and said “You know what, that’s great copy, I hate Dan too, but the fact of the matter is we did not get to the bottom of Bush’s military record.” NO one stood up and said you know what, Dan Rather does not work for the DNC, Dan Rather is just a tv anchor; at NO point did a Democrat stand up and say “...but seriously...what the fuck DID Bush do during those years?”

Somebody mishandling information does not make the information not exist anymore - in the court of public opinion, there's no getting off on a technicality. Yet for some reason, once Dan Rather fucked up the overarching issue seemingly disappeared - worse, nobody seemed to mind it going away for no real reason. It was treated as if it was overtime in a college football game and the Democrats had one chance to score, and blew it, and therefore lost the game. Which is absurd. Finally, after almost a decade, THIS ARTICLE looks back on the question of Bush's "military service."

The upshot seems to be yeah, OF COURSE Bush pulled strings to get into the Guard, and then kind of disappeared his final year and half, and nobody really gave a shit. Which is fine. But when juxtaposed against a campaign wherein an actual war hero was pilloried by Bush's team, it looks bad, even though as we've already discussed voters don't actually give a shit about military service when they vote. But again, the worst thing to me is how everybody for some reason forfeited the game because of the first strike in the first inning - why did this disappear so quickly, for so long?